Rod Dreher's Blog, page 555
July 26, 2016
Father Jacques Hamel, Martyr
Two knife-wielding attackers who had pledged allegiance to ISIS, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” slit the throat of an 84-year-old priest (one report says he was beheaded) and critically wounded at least one other person during a Tuesday morning terror attack on a Catholic church near the Normandy city of Rouen, officials said.
The terrorists were later shot and killed by police. ISIS’ Amaq news agency said the France attack was carried out by two Islamic State “soldiers,” Reuters reported.
“[ISIS] has declared war on us,” French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday. “We must fight this war by all means, while respecting the rule of law — what makes us a democracy.”
The priest, identified by Sky News as Jacques Hamel, was dead at the scene, and another person, possibly a nun, was clinging to life, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.
The church is in the French region of Normandy.
“Everyone knew him very well,” Claude-Albert Seguin, 68, said of Hamel. “He was very loved in the community and a kind man.”
The killing Tuesday inside the church, in the small northwestern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, “is obviously a drama for the Catholic community, for the Christian community,” Brandet told reporters.
The church was reportedly on a “hit list” discovered at the residence of a would-be ISIS attacker in April 2015, The Sun reported. Sid Ghlam was believed to be planning “imminent attacks” in France when investigators arrested him. Officials allegedly uncovered an arsenal of weapons and found that Ghlam was talking with someone in Syria who had ordered him to strike specific churches — including the one in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
He was martyred by these Islamists while saying mass. More:
The priest’s throat was slit by two men armed with knives who took five people – Hamel, two nuns and two worshippers – hostage in the church. The two men were later shot by police. Three hostages were freed unharmed but one is in a critical condition.
It is believed, but not yet confirmed, that the critically injured person is an elderly nun.
One of the Normandy church murderers was a convicted terrorist who was meant to be living with his parents with an electronic tag on his ankle, according to security sources.
The astonishing revelation – made to the French TV news channel I-Tele – well cause further outrage in a country devastated by constant security failings.
Why in God’s name are convicted terrorists allowed outside of prison?!
What is wrong with the French government?!
There are no words to describe the brutality of men who could do such a thing. If they can strike in a suburban town in Normandy, no place is safe.
I mentioned here the other day that a French friend had bought a gun, and is expecting some sort of civil war. This is why. People will not live with this kind of savagery forever. Father Jacques Hamel, martyr, pray for us, and for France.
Vive la France!
UPDATE: These tweets from a leading English progressive Catholic and biographer of Pope Francis make evident the moral bankruptcy of (at least some of) the European Catholic left:
While many Catholics rush to judge Rouen as *odium fidei*, Pope Francis describes it as ‘absurd’ violence. Important difference. #scapegoat
— Austen Ivereigh (@austeni) July 26, 2016
In describing Rouen murder as ‘absurd’ Pope refers to its pointless banality. Don’t glorify it / them by ascribing religious etc. motives.
— Austen Ivereigh (@austeni) July 26, 2016
1/2 So many of my correligionists are falling into the trap set by ISIS. Trying to turn Fr Hamel’s pointless murder into a sacralized act.
— Austen Ivereigh (@austeni) July 26, 2016
2/2 It’s not. It’s an act of cruel, pointless, nihilistic violence — “absurd” as pope says. It’s what evil looks like. Don’t sacralize it.
— Austen Ivereigh (@austeni) July 26, 2016
They beheaded this elderly priest as he said mass, and shouted, “Allahu akbar!” What the hell do Muslim terrorists have to do to make progressives like Austen Ivereigh and Pope Francis see what’s right in front of their noses?
Here is one prominent Christian — Cardinal Robert Sarah — who doesn’t need to be told:
Combien de morts pour que les gouvernements européens comprennent la situation où l’Occident se trouve ? Combien de têtes décapitées ? +RS
— Cardinal R. Sarah (@Card_R_Sarah) July 26, 2016
Translation: “How many dead will it take before European governments understand the situation in which the West finds itself? How many decapitated heads? +RS”
Look, you don’t have to advocate vengeance to recognize that this was Muslim fanatics killing Catholic Christians in the name of Islam. Honest, I do not get why this is so hard for progressive Christians to see and to say out loud. These lies, whether conscious or a matter of self-deception, are positively harmful.
This murder was not “absurd,” as Pope Francis said. This murder happened for a reason. Père Hamel, the martyr, died because he was a Christian priest, and that offended two radical Muslims, who butchered him before the altar of the Sacrifice of the Mass.
If the meaning of this event in suburban Rouen is not clear to Pope Francis and his biographer, their blindness is incurable. From The Guardian:
A witness to the attack has described how the two men forced the 86-year-old priest, Father Jacques Hamel, to his knees, slit his throat and filmed themselves appearing to preach in Arabic at the altar.
The nun, named as Sister Danielle, was among five hostages who were taken when the men armed with knives reportedly entered the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen, at 9.43am local time on Tuesday during morning prayers.
“Everyone was shouting ‘stop, stop you don’t know what you’re doing’. They forced him to his knees and obviously he wanted to defend himself and that’s when the drama began,” Sister Danielle said, adding that she had fled the church while the terrorists cut Hamel’s throat.
Hey, it could have been Swedish Lutherans? Who are we to judge?
‘Crooked Hillary’
David Brooks has a good column today advising Hillary Clinton regarding what she needs to do to defeat Trump. This part jumped out at me:
Third, you’re going to have to answer hatred with love. Your tendency so far in your career has been to answer hostility with distrust, and secretiveness.
You’ve ended up projecting coldness but also weakness and hurt. People who build emotional walls amid conflict do so out of fear, not strength.
Along the way you’ve made yourself phenomenally unpopular. The polls show that you are now just as distrusted by the American people as Donald Trump is.
Yesterday I caught an unaired (till last night) part of Scott Pelley’s “60 Minutes” interview with Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. He put to her a question about the DNC e-mail hack, and what it revealed about the way the supposedly neutral party insiders conspired to sabotage Bernie Sanders’ campaign on her behalf.
Clinton looked cold and resentful that she should have to answer the question, then accused Pelley of sandbagging her. And I thought: Classic Clinton behavior.
They don’t feel that the normal rules apply to them, and they’re resentful that anyone would question their behavior.
She, and the DNC, are living up to Trump’s slur. We all know what kind of burden the GOP is going to have going into this fall election. But the Democrats’ burden is just as heavy.
And So, Baton Rouge
Two years ago yesterday, my family moved into our new house in Starhill. Julie and I thought we would be there forever. Yesterday, we moved to an apartment in Baton Rouge. I’m writing this from the new bedroom, on our first night there. It doesn’t quite feel real.
To catch up those who missed it: we moved suddenly, and primarily because our beloved Orthodox mission, St. John the Theologian, is losing its priest. About six weeks ago, I suppose it was, our congregation was shocked to hear that one of our founding families was leaving us. Not only were we sad for them, but we were sad for ourselves. We knew that our mission operated on a bare-bones budget. If we lost a single tither, that would be the end for us. And so it was. Our beautiful country part of the world is not interested in Orthodoxy. We knew it would be a hard sell, and it has proven to be so. We tried. The Spirit blows where it will.
That’s not strictly true. Our friends at the mission are going to keep it open for Sunday prayer, and for a priest to come once or twice a month to say the liturgy. But Julie and I made the call fairly quickly to move to Baton Rouge. There were several reasons, the main one of which is that neither one of us are willing to live again without close involvement with an Orthodox parish. The past four years in the mission have been agonizing in some ways, but rewarding in ways that are hard for me to describe. I suppose the best testimony to how the mission changed Julie and me is that we have uprooted ourselves and moved 35 miles south to the city so we would be close to an active mission. There is no substitute for being present. We have tried before to be part of a church with a 45 minute drive between us and it. Doesn’t work, not for us anyway.
We have kids who are getting older. They need an active church life as much as their parents do. The work I’ve been doing on the Benedict Option book has convinced me even more deeply of this truth. As I wrote in How Dante Can Save Your Life, the greatest lesson of my coming home after being away for so long was discovering that I had made idols of Family and Place, and that I needed to repent of that. My change of heart did not mean that I disdained Family and Place. It only meant that I subordinated them to God, as they ought to have been in the first place. As I thought they had been, but I was wrong. Such a hard, hard lesson to learn, but glory to God that I learned it.
Still … we uprooted ourselves again. We are not happy about it. We leave behind dear friends and a place we love, though “leave behind” must be qualified by the fact that it’s only an easy 45-minute drive away. We didn’t sell our house, so you never know what’s going to happen. Mam is in good physical health, so we feel at liberty to do this now. In fact, we felt like we had to. The Church is the rock of our lives, which is to say, God.
We had already put the moving plans in motion when the shooting of Alton Sterling happened, and then the revenge murder of the two police officers and the sheriff’s deputy. I thought, oh man, do we really want to move to Baton Rouge right now? But it was too late. We hoped for the best.
Since the killings of the law enforcement officers, Baton Rouge has shown itself at its best. You’ve seen on the national news, probably, how the city has come together to honor the lives of these men — two white men and a black man — without regard to race. People here, black and white, are praying. This afternoon I was sitting in a cafe doing some writing, and heard on the radio an announcer reading Ofc. Montrell Jackson’s now-famous Facebook post after Sterling’s killing and amid the protests it sparked. The announcer read this aloud:
Then he nearly broke into tears, recalling that Ofc. Jackson was buried today. “Thank you, brother,” he said. I nearly burst into tears myself. On a nearby muted TV screen, I could see interviews from a local newscast, in which the reporter talked to folks who had come out to line the road to bid farewell to Ofc. Jackson as his hearse rolled past. Black people and white people both. One thin older white woman with a battered face, who might not have had all her teeth, was interviewed standing on the roadside, paying her respects.
I thought: there is Baton Rouge. And then I thought: it’s good to be back.
July 25, 2016
J.D. Vance’s Straight Talk About Poverty
The J.D. Vance interview really hit a nerve. Over the weekend, so many people tried to read it that the site crashed for a while. It has become by far the most-read piece ever on TAC. If you liked the interview, then by all means buy Hillbilly Elegy, Vance’s book.
The most fascinating correspondence I’m getting from the piece is from liberals who loved it. Here’s an excerpt from a letter I received from an academic whose roots are in Appalachia, and whose professional work is on Appalachian topics. I’ve edited it slightly to protect her privacy:
I do think the way I grew up is why I feel the way I do. My grandparents, who stayed in [Appalachia], worked incredibly hard every day of their lives, but they were poor until the day they died. This is why I get so angry when I hear some conservatives (not all!) suggest that the poor are lazy or, as Trump would say, “losers.” They worked harder than anybody I’ve ever known, but there’s not a lot of money to be made in [their business] — and that’s all that was available for work in that part of [Appalachia] at that time. That’s why I just can’t deal with Trump and the Republicans who endorse a secular version of the prosperity gospel. Hard work is no guarantee of success; sometimes the deck is stacked against you. That is one of the things I really appreciated about Vance’s argument–he acknowledged that while also still recognizing the importance of hard work and the possibilities of individual agency.
The left drives me nuts in some ways, too. Some of the people I work with would look down their noses at my grandparents because they only had eighth grade educations–they’d write them off as “stupid hillbillies.” There is nothing that makes me angrier. They may not have had the opportunities to be highly educated, but they were intelligent. That is true of so many people all over the world. The refusal to talk about individual agency also bothers me greatly, and then of course there’s the bigotry. I cannot tell you how many times I heard, “Must have been a short dissertation!” when I first got my job here and told people that my dissertation focused on [a topic having to do with intelligence in Appalachia]. Now I hear “I guess it’s a short book!” about [my recent book on the same topic]. My colleagues who also do this research feel the same way I do–we all want to punch these people.
I spend most of my time feeling out of place culturally. I’m so sick of being told by some on the Right that I’m a man-hater, that I’m responsible for the destruction of our country, that I indoctrinate our youth, that I’m godless and immoral, etc. I’ve been married to my college sweetheart for over 20 years. I love my daughter and son more than anything in the world. I go to church regularly. I’ve never smoked, done drugs, or been drunk in my life. But I’m also sick of some on the Left who act like I’m an idiot because I believe in God and that evil exists. I get tired of those who pretend that people’s bad lives are always a result of victimization. Yes. maybe they were victimized by “the system,” but their own bad choices played a role, too. No woman should ever be raped, but good lord, I want to shake some of these girls (and guys) and say, “Quit drinking until you’re unconscious!” Sure, in an ideal world you should be able to do whatever you want without having to worry about your safety, but would you rather be “right” or would you rather not be more vulnerable to rape? It’s insanity to me that we (feminists) are silent on the really unhealthy drinking that leaves so many young women easy prey for these sexual predators.
Would you believe that two other liberal correspondents who wrote to praise Vance are black and gay — one of them is an immigrant — and both identified Vance’s discussion about moral agency among the poor as critically important? They both grew up poor, and said this is a factor that does not get discussed.
I love the way J.D. Vance has opened up a space for more honest dialogue about poverty and dysfunction in America. If you think his book is all about blaming the poor people from which he came for all their own problems, you’re simply wrong. But he doesn’t sugarcoat or sentimentalize their lives either. He’s quite explicit in the book that if it hadn’t been for his tough old hillbilly grandmother, who finally took custody of teenage J.D. from his drug-addict mother, and the US Marine Corps, he almost certainly would have been another casualty of his culture. To be specific, he almost certainly would have been a casualty of the behavior of the adults in his culture.
(Readers, please be patient today. Commenting and comments-approval will be slow today. We are moving to a new house.)
On Bended Knee
That is East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux, praying at the hearse carrying the body of Deputy Brad Garafola, one of three law enforcement officers murdered last Sunday by Gavin Long. Here is that image from a different angle:
I don’t know who took either image. They are going around my Facebook friends. I found them both on the feed of Sheriff Gautreaux’s daughter.
They are stunning images. His daughter said she’s never seen her father, a veteran lawman, so broken up as he’s been this week. Baton Rouge buried police Officer Matthew Gerald on Friday, Deputy Garofala on Saturday, and will bury police Officer Montrell Jackson today.
My dad used to go hunting with Sid Gautreaux when I was a kid. I hadn’t seen the sheriff in decades. But when he heard last summer that my father was on his deathbed, he drove up to Starhill to tell him goodbye, just days before Daddy passed. It meant the world to my dad. That’s a good man, that Sid Gautreaux. The honor in that image.
July 23, 2016
White House, Hot Mess
Trump’s presser the day after the GOP Convention is the reason why I fear somebody this unstable in the White House. Understand that this is a man who has just been named the Republican nominee to become President of the United States. He stands to become the most powerful man in the world. And yet, on the first day of the general election campaign for him, he goes on and on and on about how Ted Cruz hurt his feelings. Excerpt:
His father. I don’t know his father, I met him once. I think he’s a lovely guy. I think he’s a lovely guy. All I did was point out that on the cover of the National Enquirer there was a picture of him and crazy Lee Harvey Oswald having breakfast. Now, Ted never denied that it was his father. Instead he said, “Donald Trump!” — I had nothing to do with it!
This was a magazine that frankly, in many respects, should be very respected. They got OJ, they got Edwards. If that was the New York Times, they would’ve gotten Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting. I’ve always said, “Why didn’t the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer Prize for Edwards, and OJ Simpson, and all of these things?”
But anyway, so they have a picture, an old picture, having breakfast with Lee Harvey Oswald. Now, I’m not saying anything. Here’s how the press takes that story. This had nothing to do with me. Except I might have pointed it out, but it had nothing to do with me, I have no control over anything. I might have pointed it out. But nobody ever denied — did anyone ever deny that it was his father? It’s a little hard to do, because it looks like him.
So here’s the story, they say, “Donald Trump and his conspiracy theories, he went out and said his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald, and he assassinated the president.” What’d I do?
So two things. Those were the two points.
So on those two points, he said about the endorsement — And I just cleared up, I think I’m doing the right thing in doing it but I have to do it. Number one: The Heidi thing you understand now. Number two: I know nothing about his father, I know nothing about Lee Harvey Oswald. But there was a picture on the front page of the National Enquirer which does have credibility, and they’re not going to do pictures like that because they get sued for a lot of money if things are wrong. Okay? A lot of money. And there was a picture, and that’s the only thing I know. So now they use the two things as the reason he won’t support me.
The indiscipline, and therefore the instability that comes with a Trump presidency is scary as hell. Here’s a guy who can’t stop himself from going off on a Lee Harvey Oswald/Ted Cruz rant the day after he has vanquished all this enemies and taken control of the GOP. This is the guy you want in the Situation Room when China forced down a US intelligence plane and holds its crew prisoner, as it did early in George W. Bush’s presidency? Jay Cost speaks for me.
In fact today’s Trump riff on Cruz is a great example of this. Trump is pissy and can’t help himself. Well imagine him doing this as POTUS.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
But instead of a former rival, it’s—say, Jordan, a regional ally. Trump just sh*ts over this alliance because he’s in a bad mood. — Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
Oh how about he’s angry at the tech sector for something. And he just goes on a tear against Apple, Oracle, etc. What’s that do to the DJIA?
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
And let’s say he does this EVERY WEEK (not an insane assumption, is it?). What does that do to our reputation in the world? — Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
The Japanese, Koreans, and Germans probably start thinking, “Hmmm…we’re not so hot on this crazy guy being in charge of our defense.”
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
Everybody else thinks, “Hey you know what? We’re not going to keep dollars as our reserve currency. How’s about the Yuan?” — Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
This is the sort of stuff that conservatives overlook in attacking Obama. Yes, his policies are terrible, but he isn’t erratic.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
He didn’t spoil the benefits the U.S. enjoys from being the world’s sole remaining super power by being a crazy person. — Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
And whatever you want to say about Hillary Clinton—and it is a LONG EFFING LIST—she won’t screw this stuff up, either.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
I guarantee you that, after 4 or 8 years of HRC, we will not have been booted out of South Korea because she said a buncha dumb stuff. — Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
I cannot make the same promise about Trump.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
And BTW this is why Pence, Walker, and Ryan can all go to hell as far as I’m concerned. As governors and high-ranking officials …
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
… they know better than anybody else all the important stuff a president does that your average FNC viewer doesn’t notice.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
The stuff that never makes headlines b/c POTUS doesn’t needlessly screw up the hard work of the last 70 years. Pence et al. know about this.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
AND YET THEY ENDORSED TRUMP ANYWAY! Knowing full well he can’t handle this critical stuff, they are telling people to vote for him.
— Jay Cost (@JayCostTWS) July 22, 2016
Kaine Unable To Please Feminists
After months of speculation that Hillary Clinton might select Sen. Elizabeth Warren as her running mate, creating the first-ever two-woman ticket, or perhaps Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a civil rights lawyer who would’ve been the first Latino VP, her choice of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine will bitterly disappoint some of her most progressive supporters.
It’s not just that Kaine, like all 47 veeps in our nation’s history, is a white dude, not a “first” who could have driven home just how historic Hillary’s candidacy is. He’s also, at least in his personal views, opposed to abortion due to his Catholic faith—a symbolic kick in the teeth for the feminist organizations that faithfully championed Hillary over Bernie throughout the long primary season. “Is Clinton a progressive? Not if she chooses Tim Kaine,” Jodi Jacobson of the reproductive rights site Rewire wrote Thursday.
That’s not to say that Kaine is running to be a heartbeat from the presidency while nursing a secret plot to overturn Roe v. Wade. Like Vice President Joe Biden—another Catholic, personally anti-abortion Democrat—he’s said that he supports the Supreme Court ruling that established a woman’s right to choose; also like Biden, Kaine has seemed to drift leftward on the issue of late. But his personal beliefs have sometimes seemed to influence his public policymaking, making his selection an optical, and perhaps actual, move toward the center for Hillary.
Kaine has a perfect rating from Planned Parenthood, and he’s one of these tame Catholics who don’t let their faith inform their position on abortion and same-sex marriage. But even that’s not enough for these extremists. It sounds like they want to Brendan Eich him — that is, reject him for not totally, 100 percent, being on board with Right Thinking since the beginning. You can’t be “personally opposed, but” anymore; you have to affirm abortion as a moral good.
The Republicans just had an openly gay man, Peter Thiel, speak in one of the most valued slots in their convention, and say that he is proud to be gay. You think the Democrats will allow a pro-life liberal speak? Please. It’s not the part of Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver anymore.
July 22, 2016
Every Picture Tells A Story
Via @streeterryan
Note this too, from Nate Silver, repeat, Nate Silver:
Don't think people are really grasping how plausible it is that Trump could become president. It's a close election right now.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 23, 2016
The Goodness Of Wayne
My wife directed me to this Facebook post by a friend of ours who works for the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Office, headquartered on Highway 61. I’ve taken her name off the top in the screen grab, because the important thing is this man’s deed. Look:
UPDATE: My wife is on her way to Baton Rouge. She sends this photo below of traffic on Highway 61. Officer Gerald’s funeral cortege is passing by. His is the first of three police officer funerals we will have locally in the next few days. This is going to happen with each man — all slain by Gavin Long. Everyone is pulled over to do him honor. One of the great things about living in the South is people here still pull over on the shoulder of the road when a funeral procession goes by.
“All traffic is stopped in both direction,” she tells me. “People have abandoned their cars and are standing there waiting to watch him pass by. There are cars parked on the shoulders of every road for as far as I can see.”
UPDATE.2: My wife just texted from the roadside, where she and our middle son are paying their respects to Ofc. Gerald. They stood next to a black mom and her son doing the same thing. “You could tell she was making sure he understood what he was seeing,” she texts. “Not at all just a white crowd showing respect, thank God.”
Amen to that. May good people of all races show solidarity with each other against the diabolic forces that seek to tear us apart.
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